My broken old Nmom, now doddering in her wheelchair, does love me. After 10 years living with her, I finally realized that.
BUT.
She CANNOT STOP BEING A NARCISSIST. So she continued to undermine, exhaust and damage me, up to and including the moment when she "sicced" my brother on me, which led to a whole chain of events that will resolve in NC with my brother likely forever. It is the exact thing she used to talk about NOT wanting, endless lectures about the importance of family, shoving me in his direction, never facing how his abusiveness had scarred me, so with every shove, she further weakened the possibility that we might find an adult way of staying in touch, however tenuous. Now, under the stress of her decline, he has turned full-tilt male-bully sabotaging N, and that is worse than anything she ever tried.
Ironically, when she was disoriented the other evening she asked me, and where are you living, in an apartment or a house? A house, I said. Where is it? I named our street. She was shocked: OUR house? Yes, I said. Well try to hang onto it, she said...
What part of her does not know that if she had ever been able to see past her Nreflexes to protect me from my brother...I wouldn't be fighting to keep it right now...
So, Beth, I'd say to never ever expect full understanding or welcome or appreciation or validation from them. If you say or write or express anything, it can only be for YOURSELF. If it will feel right to you to literally make a statement, out loud, to them sometime...then why not?
But I'd say do that only if you really really really can get into the mindset of NOT being interested in their response. Completely unattached. Having your loving embrace of yourself be so confident and complete that you KNOW you are going to benefit from just stating your true feelings to them and then walking away, completely and totally letting go of the outcome, and expecting nothing.
If you can have all that in place, yes. If you can't, why expose yourself to the disappointment of needing or expecting or hoping for something that is likely never going to come?
For me, sitting in a close circle of women friends in a UU covenant group twice a month, where I can literally say everything that is in my heart, in safety and in confidence, has healed the place where I once wanted that acceptance and support from family. In fact, my church community IS my family.
love,
Hops
